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Movies: Last Movie You Watched and Rate It | Part#: Some High Number +3

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The Invisible Man (2020). 9-/10 I heard it got good reviews but I didn't expect it to be this good. Elisabeth Moss is really good in this and she's definitely going to win an Oscar because nothing else will make the theaters this year. A combination of horror and thriller. Soundtrack also really works.
 
Star Wars I and II (Phantom Menace and Attack of the Clones) - 2/10. I'd give them 1/10 but I keep these for films so bad they're kind of fun and there was no fun in these. Terrible acting, terrible screenplays and absolutely terrible use of CGI and visual effects.

Would You Rather (David Guy Levy, 2012) - 4/10. More fun than I expected, but meh.

Spencer Confidential (Berg, 2020) - 4/10. A Wahlberg vehicule, cool characters, no-shit-given attitude, kind of works but pointless.

Anna (Besson, 2019) - 4/10. Cute girl kicking ass. Meh, it wears itself out rather quickly.

La bestia uccide a sangue freddo (Di Leo, 1971) - 4,5/10. Now that was a surprise. Presented as a giallo with Klaus Kinsi under the title Hotel Slaughter on Prime, this film is a unique mess. Certainly not a giallo, it has a very weird signature, with artsy visuals, artsy editing, and terrible music. With lots of nudity, it really feels like a porn with the porn roughly edited out - but no, it seems it was intentionally made that way, with borderline hardcore female masturbation scenes. Pretty bad film overall, and Kinski is lauguable (that guy could overact intensity all day long), but the mess is intriguing, the women are beautiful for most, and some shots are pretty nice.
(edit: oh, the copy on Prime lacks sound two or three times for some kind of long moments, I don't think they checked what they were putting on at all)
 
The Quiet Earth

with three people from New Zealand. And nobody else...

Sometime during the 80's the world ended. Or at least it did for this one guy. Zac is a middle-aged man who wakes up alone in the world. He gets up, puts on his trousers, looks around...and there's no one. At all. Anywhere. He goes outside his house, and sees common activities just halted suddenly and nobody's around to explain at all. Nobody on the road, nobody on the beach. Or at the store, or in the mall, or anywhere. Huh. We learn he's a scientist who was working on some super-secret worldwide cloak and dagger project to tap into the universal energy grid surrounding the Earth or something. It's called Project Flashlight, and something went a bit screwy. So Zac's kind of flummoxed. He's literally got the planet to himself. Which sounds like fun at first...but after a few weeks when you're running around in a woman's nightgown blowing plaster Jesus off the walls of a church with a shotgun, it gets old. Especially if you're wracked with guilt about the super-secret worldwide cloak and dagger project you were involved with that might have killed everyone else on the planet but you. And...wait, what? This redhead chick who shows up out of nowhere. She's cute, huh? And...hold on, there's someone else! This big Maori guy...who totally couldn't cause tension over there being one girl and two guys left on the planet, right? Also, this whole Project Flashlight thing didn't just royally screw the planet, sun, the laws of physics and/or the universe itself, did it?

Not bad. Pretty involving while you're going through it. Overall enjoyable.

On Prime. Like everything else from the 80's.
 
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Our family(me, wife, two daughters) watched Patriots Day last night.
Knowing the story it's not the type of movie I would normally watch but we all thought it was excellent, really well done.
 
Uncut Gems

Wife would give it a 3/10 and I'd give it a 6/10. Biggest issue for me is how fast paced it was. Some points it was really hard to follow what was going on.
 
ACC1224 said:
Our family(me, wife, two daughters) watched Patriots Day last night.
Knowing the story it's not the type of movie I would normally watch but we all thought it was excellent, really well done.
Click to expand...

The pace is fine, but the main issue with it is that Mark Wahlberg is in every scene, even when he does nothing to move the story forward after the opening sequence. After a while, he gets very annoying, and one just wants him to go away.
 
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The Thing (1982) - 5/10

Horror movies are dumb, dunno why I watched this just because it was supposed to be a good horror film. Anti-climatic/incomplete ending too.

Grosse Pointe Blank (1997) - 7/10

Could've been a bit better if the dialogue hadn't been so awkward or maybe its the scene direction. The character interaction is mostly just off, Minnie Driver is fairly bad. John Cusack is fairly enjoyable though and it's a fun enough romp to make it very watchable.
 
Blue City (1986)

A Breakfast Club revenge movie.. Judd Nelson & Ally Sheedy partner up to avenge the murder of Nelson's father. Set in a small, corrupt Southern town. Predictable and filled with clichés. Good cast, but very thin script.. Some good nostalgic stuff, but quickly forgettable. On Hulu..
I give it a 3 (on a 10 pt scale)
 
Ad Astra (2019) - 7/10 (Really liked it)

An astronaut (Brad Pitt) is given a mission to establish contact with his father (Tommy Lee Jones), who disappeared on a mission to the far reaches of the Solar System 29 years ago and might be behind pulse surges that are endangering Earth. This was different and better than I was expecting. I thought that it was more psycho drama than space movie--and it is very much a character drama--but I was happy to discover that it's very much a space movie, too. It's a hardcore, intelligent sci-fi film. I was reminded in some ways of 2001: A Space Odyssey, since it fills its time with impressive visuals and monologues more than action (though there is a little of that) and is a bit about the human condition. I was also reminded of Gravity during many situations. Pitt's character is naturally calm under pressure, so the role doesn't allow for much range, but he delivers a good performance in spite of that. The story is on the minimal side, which may be too little for some, but I thought that it fit the style of the film. Perhaps because of that, though, not everything made complete sense, a few things felt contrived or tacked on and the ending seemed a bit anti-climactic. All of that didn't greatly lessen my enjoyment, but it might for others. In fact, it's probably not a film that would appeal to most people. Only if you happen to be like me and a fan of more hardcore and intelligent sci-fi would I really recommend it.
 
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The Quiet Earth (Murphy, 1985) - I gave this 4/10 some 20 years ago on IMDB. I'd be tempted now to push it to 5/10, maybe somewhere in between. Too bad that the more it goes, the less interesting it gets.

La Ragazza Dalla Pelle Di Luna (The Girl With the Moon Skin, Scattini, 1972) - Prime suggested that to me, probably because I watched that Kinski semi-erotic-wannabe-giallo film. Common link? Old Italian films with some beautiful naked women, I guess. It seems that it's the first part of a Scattini trilogy of films with some loosely common themes but one central element: the undeniable charms of actress Zeudi Araya Cristaldi (whom I had never heard of). The copy on Prime is terrible, and even though you can imagine that some images might have been pretty nice, there's nothing left of that. The editing and narrative flow are weak, the actors are terrible, and it fails as an erotic drama. As a couple's drama, even though it's always twice removed from being really meaningful, it's still original enough to be interesting. I'll go with a 5/10, I liked it better than most of the films I saw recently.
(warning: includes some animal cruelty)
 
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I vaguely remember The Quiet Earth, which I didn't love but which I liked more than you guys did. Guess I should watch it again.
 
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earth-dovhenko-dancer.png


Earth (1930) Directed by Alexander Dovzhenko 9B

A small group of peasants (and a couple of babies) relax in a pear orchard filled with abundance, people debate heatedly the new collectivism, a tractor arrives to the delight of the village, a long montage follows tracing the making of bread from planting the crops to baking the dough, a peasant dances his way to his death (one of the most breathtakingly haunting scenes in film history), a funeral ensues that unites the village, his assailant is driven crazy with worry and the need to escape: obviously this is not one's conventional movie narrative, not even by Soviet standards in the silent era. When I think of USSR (Russia) movie making in this period, I first think of Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin, masters who between them defined the art of montage (placing images together through editing to tell a story or make a point or generate an emotion). Their movies have a precision and visual logic that Dovzhenko lacks. Rather he is much more the mad poet of Russian filmmakers, an artist who seems to ride on instinct and intuition to tell his stories. Dovzhenko's camera seldom moves unless it placed in a solitary position for a tracking shot. Rather his movies are dominated by faces, faces and more faces, inventive camera angles, and unexpected choices, including the use of clouds worthy of a landscape artist like Turner and livestock who seem to come alive as almost mythical creatures. Exactly what he is saying politically wasn't "pure" enough for the Soviet authorities, though they had to think about it a little before banning the film. Indeed, I found the message ambiguous as well. However, the movie is somehow more viscerally immediate than the work of his more meticulous colleagues. Earth in its peculiarly earthy way is one of the great visual achievements of the silent era.

intertitles
 
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ProstheticConscience said:
The Quiet Earth

with three people from New Zealand. And nobody else...
Click to expand...
Violenza Domestica said:
The Quiet Earth (Murphy, 1985) - I gave this 4/10 some 20 years ago on IMDB. I'd be tempted now to push it to 5/10, maybe somewhere in between. Too bad that the more it goes, the less interesting it gets.
Click to expand...

I watched this yesterday. The title and premise were vaguely familiar, but it wasn't until the first post-title shot (yes, that one) that I knew that I'd seen it before. I realized by the end that I recall seeing it back in the 80s with my dad and then again maybe 20 years ago, probably when it came out on DVD. It was kind of weird watching it now, with coronavirus keeping everyone home and away from public places. On top of that, I just happened to watch it while this site was down, which was creepy. The character turning on the radio and receiving nothing but static was like accessing this site and getting an error message. It might as well be the end of the world for me if I can't access HF. Anyways, I quite enjoyed the first third. After that, it loses a lot of steam, I agree. It's never "bad," just disappointing that it doesn't maintain its early strength. It could've been a classic sci-fi film if it had. I'd probably give the first third a 7/10, the rest 5/10 and the whole thing 5/10, like you. I'm glad that I watched it again, though, especially when I did.

The last half isn't as good as the first half, but it does include this epic one-liner...

Joanne: I wouldn't ride with you if you were the last man on Earth.
Api: [Puts on shades] I'm working on it.
:laugh:

Edit: I just read a great review that sums up my thoughts (and even ends with the same quote, hah): The Quiet Earth (1985)
 
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So I've binged a couple of movies a day on various platforms for the last week due to the coronavirus quarantine, sadly, there have been only 2 movie I'd consider decent and above average:

A Most Violent Year
2.70 out of 4stars

First and foremost, this is Oscar Isaac's film. His performance is the best thing about this movie, although that is not me saying the rest of it wasn't great. The best way I can put this movie in my head is "How to be a gangster without breaking laws". Think about that, an ethical, moral, cerebral businessman that will do almost anything and everything he can within those parameters to become rich, powerful, and important....during one of the most violent years in NYC while combating those elements and trying to keep your dignity. Chastain is good too, but Isaac is another level.

Joe (2014)
2.70 out of 4stars

A different kind of film than A Most Violent Year, it's very much more raw, more emotion, more about a variety of characters and restraint in a poor southern rural town than a polished urban city. While AMVY had me thinking, this movie had my stomach feeling all over the place (obviously I got absorbed into both stories here). This is a movie where the visuals tell the story and their lingering impacts stay with you. I also think Cage is very relatable here: playing this man that battles his past, battles his inner demons/rage, tries to do better, battles how far he should go or not to play "God" in helping to bring justice to situations he has no direct business in (which everyone does on small to large scales, and is a big reason for almost every, small and big, personal argument/fight to political lawmaking/debates we have today). Those thoughts and feelings of guilt, rage/anger, hopelessness, escape, kindness, "doing bad things for good reason", there is a such a well drawn rainbow of human emotions emitted through Cage's character. Excellent humanization. Poulter and Sheridan are great too, but in different ways.

Ironically, Joe and AMVY are both about will power, but at polar opposites of the spectrum. Cage tries to restrain himself and find some meaning in his life and hold on to whatever is around, while Isaac pushes as hard as he can to maintain the high end world he has and continues to try and grow. And yes, Cage deserves the praise for his turn in this.
 
La Haine (1995) - 6/10

Take the fun out of Do The Right Thing and the rhythm out of City of God and combine them into a joyless film with three annoying characters to follow around and you have this.

The Collector/La Collectionneuse (1967) - 5/10

Eugh.
 
Osprey said:
I watched this yesterday. The title and premise were vaguely familiar, but it wasn't until the first post-title scene (yes, that one) that I knew that I'd seen it before. I have a recollection of seeing it 30 years ago and maybe again 15-20 years ago. It was kind of weird watching it now, with coronavirus keeping everyone home and away from public places. On top of that, I just happened to watch it while this site was down, which was creepy. The character turning on the radio and receiving nothing but static was like accessing this site and getting an error message. It might as well be the end of the world for me if I can't access HF. Anyways, I quite enjoyed the first third. After that, it gets less interesting. It's never "bad," just a little disappointing that it doesn't maintain its early strength. It could've been a classic sci-fi film if it had. I'd probably give the first third a 7/10 and the rest 5/10. I'm not sure if that warrants a 6/10, so I'd probably go with 5/10, like you. I'm glad that I watched it again, though, especially when I did.

The last half isn't as good as the first half, but it does include this epic one-liner...

Joanne: I wouldn't ride with you if you were the last man on Earth.
Api: [Puts on shades] I'm working on it.
:laugh:

Edit: I just read a great review that sums up my thoughts (and even ends with the same quote, hah): The Quiet Earth (1985)
Click to expand...
Violenza Domestica said:
The Quiet Earth (Murphy, 1985) - I gave this 4/10 some 20 years ago on IMDB. I'd be tempted now to push it to 5/10, maybe somewhere in between. Too bad that the more it goes, the less interesting it gets.

La Ragazza Dalla Pelle Di Luna (The Girl With the Moon Skin, Scattini, 1972) - Prime suggested that to me, probably because I watched that Kinski semi-erotic-wannabe-giallo film. Common link? Old Italian films with some beautiful naked women, I guess. It seems that it's the first part of a Scattini trilogy of films with some loosely common themes but one central element: the undeniable charms of actress Zeudi Araya Cristaldi (whom I had never heard of). The copy on Prime is terrible, and even though you can imagine that some images might have been pretty nice, there's nothing left of that. The editing and narrative flow are weak, the actors are terrible, and it fails as an erotic drama. As a couple's drama, even though it's always twice removed from being really meaningful, it's still original enough to be interesting. I'll go with a 5/10, I liked it better than most of the films I saw recently.
(warning: includes some animal cruelty)
Click to expand...

kihei said:
I vaguely remember The Quiet Earth, which I didn't love but which I liked more than you guys did. Guess I should watch it again.
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Was The Quiet Earth just released for streaming or something? I just watched it yesterday on Amazon without seeing anything in this thread. Maybe it was a new release, I'm not sure.

I thought it was pretty bad to be honest. Like not completely awful, but extremely dated and it absolutely starts to drag the more it goes on. I liked more when it when it was just him and he's trying to figure out what happened/losing his mind a bit, but I don't think either side character worked IMO. It felt like a really odd tonal mishmash, there were parts that I could not tell if they were trying to be comedic or not. Either way, it didn't work.
 
The Platform (El Hoyo, Gaztelu-Urrutia, 2019) - The allegory here lacks as much in subtelty as it lacks in completion (and it kind of feels like the authors just didn't know what to make of the "kid as the message" ending), but still, it's a film with some guts (pun intended). I'm not sure it can survive a second viewing, but for now I'll go with 6/10.
 
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Osprey said:
The title and premise were vaguely familiar
Click to expand...

The big problem with it (and probably the main reason I am kind of fond of it) is that it came after two adaptations of I Am Legend (The Last Man On Earth and Omega Man), and after two films that were great variations on it (Night of the Living Dead and Dawn of the Dead), four films that were a lot better than The Quiet Earth (which has no official link to I Am Legend but is also a clear variation on it). So yeah, the premise seems familiar (even if you have never seen it) and everything that follows can only be disappointing.

I still think it makes a great double feature with Omega Man.

Trap Jesus said:
Like not completely awful, but extremely dated and it absolutely starts to drag the more it goes on.
Click to expand...

So 5/10 too? ;-)
 
ItsFineImFine said:
La Haine (1995) - 6/10

Take the fun out of Do The Right Thing and the rhythm out of City of God and combine them into a joyless film with three annoying characters to follow around and you have this.

The Collector/La Collectionneuse (1967) - 5/10

Eugh.
Click to expand...

I have La Collectionneuse at 5/10 too, but I can't agree with your harsh review of La Haine!
 
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